Writing • Culture • Leftward // Resistance is Crucial

(Writer’s note: the #TrumpRussia shit is hitting the fan and speculation abounds that Cletus will soon move to fire Rod Rosenstein. Comey’s new book is causing a meltdown in the white house, too. So call this post counter-programming—yet another potential area of investigation for Special Counsel Robert Mueller.)

For everything there’s always a first time.

Never in the 2.5 years I’ve been writing CrankyYank have I embedded a clip from Fox News. Above you’ll see a rare FNC Trump critic say the lack of response to Russian election meddling in the U.S. is “troubling.” (Since that clip aired in Dec. 2016 Fox has morphed/devolved into cheerleading state-run “Dear Leader” TV.)

This post follows a simple premise. Why—after Putin and Russia have committed many horrible offenses—did it take Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of 13 Russians for Trump to issue his own sanctions list?

Taken verbatim from Mueller’s list of indictments, U.S. Department of Treasury’s sanctioned oligarchs list is available here. Which of course begs the question, Was this a case of cut-and-paste foreign policy or something else?

Most media reports I’ve seen and read only describe this as laziness rather than purposeful or calculating.

Following a tip from a confidential source who urged me to look at this, here is a short—and of course not exhaustive—primer of Russia’s actions and what our country’s official responses were.

Which brings us back to Mueller’s indictments this month, as well as the official response from Treasury. Here’s how Buzzfeed described Trump Treasury’s oligarch sanctions:

The sanctions appeared to support Mueller’s indictments, which Trump sought to temper at the time by saying that it showed “no collusion” between his campaign and Russians. He even criticized his national security adviser, Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, for telling a conference in Germany that Mueller’s indictment provided “incontrovertible” evidence of Russian interference.

An identical sanctions list strikes both my source and me as a convenient coincidence. This would barely rank in the top 10 of Donald Trump’s most obstruction-of-justice-y offenses, but it’s still worth wondering: Was this Trump’s way of “supporting Mueller” or a way of blocking him from interviewing key people in the Trump-Russia scandal?

I’ll add more to this post tomorrow with a deeper-dive into which of these oligarchs matter most. 🔵

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Why so cranky?

I strive to be a distiller of life, a curator of cures, a dealer of dope stuff. And I attempt to cure my crankies by snarking my way through all the week’s news. CY publishes at 2 p.m. on Thursdays. [ Tell Me More ]